In the post-9/11 world, we want to set up security regimes that can protect strategic infrastructure like our airports and our port systems.'Ĭomputers have solved many so-called perfect-information games such as checkers and Connect Four, where all players can see everything that's happening in the game. 'One application is in the realm of security. 'Our algorithm can attack a number of problems that have similar aspects to this game - adversarial settings where two players have antithetical goals against each other,' says lead study author Michael Bowling, a computer scientist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

Solving this kind of poker is more than just fun and games, researchers say.

The team published a study about the program this week in Science. What it means, statistically speaking, is that there is no significant chance to see if the computer's strategy is not the best within a human lifetime of play - 200 games per hour for 12 hours a day for 70 years. This doesn't mean a machine always knows when you're bluffing and will beat a human every time, especially since so much luck and guile is at play in poker. You can play against the program yourself online here. Scientists have now created a program that has essentially solved the two-player limit version of Texas hold 'em poker.

Texas hold em heads up poker machines